The exhaustion of being in control (and letting go)

For the longest time I’ve told the story that I’m an A-type personality and have found assessments to corroborate the belief from MBTI to Enneagram to Archetypal studies and anything in between.

The past week has had me being curious about one trait of the so-called A-type me: The need to be in control.
The propulsion to hold those reigns as tightly as I do, specifically relative to running my business, has its fears deeply rooted in decades of learning and self beliefs and it took courage for me to face the fact that this need has left me exhausted and in clinical burnout for the past 3 years.

What triggered this time for reflection? For the past 18 months I’ve been coached, encouraged, advised and downright told, to take on a ‘2IC’ and whilst I’ve recognised cognitively the validity of the request or urging, I’ve resisted all the way. The fear of ‘it’ not being done the way that I do it; the potential of someone dropping the ball; this person not being committed to my business in the way that I am … All of these stories ensured that I held the decision at a distance and in the meanwhile got more and more exhausted to the point that sleep began to become a infrequent bed partner, I became more controlling and dropped the ball. Exhaustion became my BFF!
So this week I moved into the fear, took the leap of faith, softened myself to the place of being supported and asked for help.
A remarkable woman has joined my team as my ‘2IC’ and what have I found?

That letting go has created great exhaustion for me!

So often the mirror image of an action or emotion creates the same reaction in us when we are hoping that the complete opposite will be realised.

Where do we start then to do it differently? If we start from the result that is to be different, and ask why then my sense is that this will inform the different actions we take to bring out change.

I choose to be rested and feel lighter in the world, and if this is what I’m wanting to feel then I choose to be supportable and ask for help even if this means a tough journey lies ahead.

By our birthright it is a given and yet I think from time to time, whilst we are still in the mood of living, we get sucked into the frenzy, the spinning and spewing of life and come close to dying as we forget to breathe.